I need to write about the servicemen killed in Afghanistan over this Koran burning, but 1:30am, all hopped up on pain meds might not be the time to do it. I’ll just say one thing: if I can deal with stoners rolling joints with the pages of the Bible in almost every movie I’ve seen (and it’s not like I’ve never seen it in real life either) without killing someone or throwing a big public tantrum, I think the Afghanis should be able to weather this with a little f#$%ing dignity.

I know, I know — there’s a greater chance of Romney developing some clearly conservative principles.

They should be angry at the terrorists who defaced the Koran in the first place and necessitated its destruction. Their anger is misdirected, unless this is simply an excuse to kill Americans. I think we all know the score here, this late in the game.

I’m not even going to get started on Obama’s apology — ! — because my mother really dislikes it when I start swearing.

Surgery tomorrow. I’m kind of nervous, because I’ve never had anything like surgery before, unless you count getting my wisdom teeth removed when I was 19. Mr HG thinks I’m being a drama queen, which is likely.

About a week ago, I downloaded a sample of Asa Larsson’s Until Thy Wrath Be Past and when I went to buy it after reading the first couple chapters, I found out that the publisher had pulled it. Lame.

I had just gotten to the part when the unimportant minor character finds the dead body. I love Scandinavian procedurals. I’m partial to Icelandic ones, but Asa Larsson writes about rural northern Sweden. Her touch is light, and she takes what could be very formulaic to a very different place.

Santorum is fascinating; he’s an honest politician. I’m literally mesmerized by him. He’s willing to say things that people don’t want to hear and to defy “conventional wisdom” and just go for it. I don’t know if he’s Reagan or Goldwater, both of whom were good men and solid conservatives. As a Republican, I’ll take him if he’s either, but I’m praying for a Reagan.

The fact that Santorum is gaining so much traction tells me that people want someone who stands for something, even if they don’t agree with all of what he says.

Whether or not that will translate into a nationwide draw, I have no idea. I’m cynical, you know that. But I do know that as a whole this country is starved for principle and resolve. We’re soft and relativistic and so empty. People want something real.

I’m grateful to Santorum for forcing on me the discomfort of having to think about the moral implications of his daughter’s smile.

I am forced to consider that much of my reaction to Santorum is based on his respect and absolute devotion to life. The loss of his child, his beautiful daughter, his fierce advocacy for the unborn — all of these things make him a very attractive candidate for president. A man who so respects life has his priorities straight.

When my oldest was diagnosed with her numerous congenital heart defects, we were told that many of the kids with her kind of heart don’t always make it very far. It was a long, stressful, heartrending road, but we walked it with her. I’d have carried her to the gates of Heaven itself, if I could have. But I wasn’t able to do that, and she went on without me. I didn’t know about her heart before she was born, but if I had, I can’t help wondering if I’d have been advised to terminate the pregnancy. Her outlook was bleak, and I could have “saved” myself heartache and pain if I’d decided to scrap the defective and try again. But I’d not have traded those 2 years and 9 months for anything. Anything.

She was a beautiful creature, smart and funny and sweet, and when I hear about pre-screening and all that, I just know that so many pregnancies are ended early on account of test results that are not 100% accurate. What do we miss when we make the decision to override the lot which Fate has cast? Who would we have become had we allowed life to happen, and who would that little life become if we’d have given him or her a chance?

Having a “disabled” child is not the end of the world. They are, each of them, amazing little people. I grew up with a girl who was a Down Syndrome kid and I cannot imagine who I would be had I not met her. It wasn’t weird; it was just who she was. She was funny and mean and nice and bossy just like any other kid. I was lucky to have had her in my life.

So in Santorum and his wife, I see all of the parents, (myself included), whose lives are richer for having given life a chance, for having the courage to face what Fate throws at them.

All of you parents out there who’ve got “special needs” or “disabled” or “handicapped” kids — you are heroes. You love deeper and stronger and fuller than can be imagined and you are blessed with beautiful, unique kids who are fearfully and wonderfully made. Sometimes our kids don’t get to stay with us as long as we’d hoped, and sometimes the hurt of loss seems more than we can stand. If this is your Fate, there are no words I have that can comfort you, because there is no comfort to be given. But you knew that little person and you loved that little person and there is something after death, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. And though it puzzles the will, conscience did not make cowards of you all. You let that child live and they touched lives you may never know were touched.

It is obscene how beautiful it is in my corner of the world today. Sitting in the back yard, basking in the sun, listening to the police sirens a couple of blocks away… but it’s 63°F in the shade, a slight breeze to cool you off if you get too hot, and a backyard full of fig and apple trees, rosebushes, anonymous purple-flowered climbing plants (not wisteria), and irises. And a pushy pit bull named Pete, resting his head on my keyboard, who wants me to pet him NOW, because don’t I know how much he loves me?

I’ve read about this thing called “winter” that yall experience, but I’ve only got a vague idea of what that word actually means.

For months we’ve been hearing how Paul is the only principled candidate ever, in the history of the Republic — perhaps the history of the world — to run for the leader of the (mostly) free world. Ron Paul’s no RINO, he’s the only real conservative in this entire country. Maybe in the world.

So how do you feel about the Only Conservative In The Race most likely aligning himself with the Governor RINO? Does this change your perception of him, or is this another thing that can be explained away by the vast conspiracy that is trying to keep the Only Real Conservative from winning the White House?

I’ve always thought Paul was a douche; this only confirms my suspicions. He’s dangerous on foreign policy. His ideas are infantile at best, cynical at the worst. All the libertarian leanings in the world cannot make up for his belief that America deserved 9/11 and that Iran’s bellicosity is of our own creation.

Syrian forces have shot dead unarmed women and children, shelled residential areas and tortured wounded protesters in hospital under orders from the ‘highest level’ of army and government officials, the United Nations said today.

Independent UN investigators called for perpetrators of such crimes against humanity to face prosecution and said they had drawn up a confidential list of names of commanding officers and officials alleged to be responsible.

Investigators said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council: ’The commission received credible and consistent evidence identifying high- and mid-ranking members of the armed forces who ordered their subordinates to shoot at unarmed protesters.

The UN says a lot of things and yet does very little about it. It’s blatantly obvious that Bashir Assad is a monster, that Ahmadinejad is a monster, that the world is populated by monsters who have no qualms killing children to further their own psychotic agendas. And it is blatantly obvious that none of these monsters are afraid of the UN or America. Not anymore. Barack Obama has succeeded in reducing us to the paper tiger Osama claimed we were.

And so people continue to die, threats continue to be made, and the world becomes a more dangerous place by the moment.

Twelve years ago today, I married the funniest, most intelligent, most infuriatingly independent person I have ever met. Sweet, strong, protective and genuinely nice, he’s been the only person I cannot bend to my will or seem to lose interest in. I forgot to tell him this morning as we did the school/work run, but I did remember.

Happy anniversary, Mr. HG.

Also, we make ridiculously awesome kids. And that’s not just my biased, mom opinion, it’s a fact. Ask anyone who has been around my kids. Smart, confident, independent thinkers who never want to eat anything I make for them.

To be fair and accurate, Santorum did not compare himself to Reagan, he just brought up the “evil empire” speech that freaked the media out in 1983. Read Santorum’s statement; he does not imply that he’s the second coming of Ronaldus Magnus.

I am a bit perplexed by the establishment’s apoplectic response to an old Santorum speech. The talking heads on the right don’t really seem to get that people who believe in things understand what Santorum was saying. He used archaic language, but his assertion that good and evil exist shouldn’t be controversial. It is, because we’ve moved so far from traditional morality, but it shouldn’t be. If the strict Catholicism of Rick Santorum makes you uncomfortable, read some C.S. Lewis, who was known to be quite the rational intellect in his day.

This “controversy” is stupid and manufactured. People don’t like the concept of good and evil because they don’t like behaving themselves. I don’t like it, I don’t always behave myself, and I feel bad about it later — but that doesn’t change the fact that right is right and wrong is wrong and there’s no amount of wishing on my part that will change that.

And, just for the record, I was talking about Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin well before Ben Shapiro wrote his piece on it. I just don’t know the secret handshake.

me.

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"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful." --CS Lewis--